Written in Stone Read Online Free PDF Page A

opened her mouth to snap back at me, but then she sighed and arranged a calmer expression. “I didn’t mean it.”
    “People say what they mean.” I was not going to let up on her.
    “You could learn,” she said quietly. “You’re plenty smart enough, but you don’t pay attention to your work, Pearl. Your mind is miles away when you are making a basket. What are you thinking about all the time?”
    I could feel her leaning forward and to one side in the canoe to look at my face. There was no way I was going to tell her what I was thinking. She wasn’t my mother. I let an unpleasant silence grow between us. I heard Henry paddling more loudly behind his mother and felt a touch of guilt. He always took my side when Ida cheated at dice or Charlie copied my schoolwork. Even if I would never love Aunt Loula, I ought to respect her for his sake.
    I was about to apologize when Aunt Loula said, “A woman with baskets can stay home with her family, not go off to some cannery job miles away.”
    I knew it was true, but I fought it. I wanted to be a weaver, as my mother had been. She had a commission from a chief up north. He was going to pay her a hundred trade blankets and seventy-five dollars in gold coin. It would take her a year to follow the pattern on the board this chief sent, but when she was finished, her Chilkat blanket would hold a place of honor in that chief’s house for generations. That was what I wanted, something thatwould last. And Aunt Loula was right. I was a pathetic basket maker. Mine always came out flat as a plate and wobbly around the edges.
    “Keep working,” Grandma had said when I was younger. “It takes practice.”
    But I think she was relieved when I gave it up and learned to spin from my mother instead. It was the first step to becoming a weaver. It took forever to get the feel of stretching the wool out and rolling it up my thigh into an even twist of yarn. But Mama never minded my mistakes and never rushed me to be perfect. She laughed at my lumpy tangles and said, “Put some more meat on that leg and the spinning will go easier. Get outside and run. I won’t have that Charlie running faster than my girl.”
    And then I would forget the weaving altogether and attack Charlie with a broken fish club. Pirates and Indians was our favorite game. If I had known that I’d lose Mama that same year, I would never have played outside, not ever. I would have sat beside her and watched her hands. Weaving was a rare gift—a legacy. It should have been mine, and I wanted it.
    I fumed over Aunt Loula’s words all the way up the river. I didn’t rest. Not when the blisters rose, as we reached the mouth of the lake and paddled along the southern shore past the gravel bar at Willaby Creek. Not when they broke and oozed, as we paddled by the greensloping lawn and powder-blue rowboats at the Lake Quinault Lodge. There was something satisfying in the sharpness of the pain.
    I watched the tourists lounging in chairs and playing croquet at the lodge. They never seemed to worry. They spent the whole day not working, unless you count rowing a lady with a parasol around in circles work. And then they went in that fancy dining hall for dinner without a care for how they would pay.
    “What do you suppose they do, to eat without working?” I asked.
    “Rob banks,” Henry said. “Or maybe hold up trains. I am especially suspicious of those two.” He pointed to a magnificently overweight gray-haired woman and her companion with a cane and thick spectacles.
    Even Aunt Loula laughed.
    “Look,” I said, pointing to three boys in sailor suits digging in the sand. “Prospectors. No doubt they’ve struck oil or made their fortunes in gold already.”
    As we passed by, the boys stood up and pointed at our canoes. They pantomimed shooting us with arrows and made war whoops. In the canoe in front of us, Charlie pretended to shoot back, and Ida waved as if she were the belle of the Independence Day parade.
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